


the most beautiful thing in the universe

by yonderdarling



Series: that hashtag vault lyfe [5]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Eaters of Light episode tag, F/M, Painting, The Medusa Cascade, The vault, whatever it was called
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 13:06:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11253573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yonderdarling/pseuds/yonderdarling
Summary: "You could be beautiful. With a mind like that, we could travel the stars. It would be my honour." Twelve brings Missy aboard the TARDIS.





	the most beautiful thing in the universe

**Author's Note:**

> Hammered out while researching/yelling at various politicians; looked over by Ilana, who said it was nice. Spoilers for series 10, obviously.

Missy's working with her new watercolours, listening to the new Adele album ( _42_ ), humming. She adds a blot of pastel-pink, smears some lemon yellow across the top and there it is; a perfect Monet reproduction.

"I'll put you with the others," she says, lifting it from the easel.

Heels clicking pleasingly on the floor, Missy lies the picture down next to the other paintings - two other Monets, a Van Gogh, three Hokusai reproductions (he's just so relaxing to recreate), and two original works. One depicts the light off silver leaves at the summers solstice on Gallifrey from her childhood bedroom window. The other is a cat in a bowl of fruit, a fat tabby cat with green eyes. It has a little Carmen Miranda fruit hat on its head.

She's quite pleased with how that one turned out.

Missy crouches over one of the Hokusai paintings, flicks a speck of dust off the corner, when an unexpected breeze fills the room. She turns as the wheezing, groaning, wonderful, awful noise of the TARDIS fills the room, materialising next to her favourite chair of the week.

"Doctor," she says, and looks around. Takes out her watch and checks it. No, it's only been eighty-one years, not a thousand. "Doctor," she says, then. "No, Eggman, he better not be stuck on Mars _again_."

The TARDIS lands, and Missy steps away from her paintings, hiding her colour-splattered hands behind her back. The doors swing open with a creak, and the Doctor steps out, looking towards the piano.

"I'm not playing today," Missy says, and he turns, forehead furrowed. "I'm enjoying the silence. The solitude."

She means to be biting. It means she can pretend there's still a skerrick of equality happening here. Of balance.

The Doctor walks over, boots heavy on the floor. He head across to her and walks amongst her paintings carefully, examining them in the grey light of the windows, the orange glow of the heater.

"These are beautiful," he says, and looks at her, eyebrows raised, eyes wide. "Beautiful."

"You can have one," Missy replies. "Whatever you like."

"I'm friends with Vincent, I could get a print anytime," the Doctor says. "But this - " He stoops, extends his fingers and passes them around the painting of the view from her bedroom window. "Oh, Missy."

"I spent a lot of time in there," she says.

The Doctor stands, his knees creaking. "It's beautiful." He goes to say something else, then sets his jaw, squares his shoulders. He points vaguely with his thumb. "Come on."

"I'm sorry?"

The Doctor swallows, his throat clicking. "Come on."

Missy takes a step back. "Is this a joke? Doctor, I thought it was never cruel nor cowardly."

"I mean it. Bio-lock's on the console, security setting Alpha enabled."

She blinks. Water trickles down her cheek.

"Oh, for - not again," she says, and brings out her handkerchief. She swipes at her eyes. "Doctor?"

"You won't be going outside. It's just the Vault. Portable." He reaches out to her, seems to think better of it. "Come on."

Missy switches the heater off. "Okay," she says. "I just need to grab - "

"I set your rooms up," says the Doctor, and he's standing in the doorway of the TARDIS, the doorway. "You can use the wardrobe, that's open to you."

He's got that soft smile on, the pitying smile, the beautiful smile, the one he saves only for those moments where he's naked and honest, half-awake in the bed next to her or cooking, or playing that stupid guitar, or she sees him watching her play piano when he's meant to be reading. "Come on, Missy."

It's ten steps to the TARDIS, and she lifts her skirt and steps inside the console room, which hums warily as she makes her way in. Missy turns, watches the doors shut, blocking out the image of the Vault. She exhales.

"I don't suppose I get to make requests for visits?"

The Doctor moves past her, across the console. She trails after him, holds her hands above the controls. There's a sense of numbness in her palms and fingers, and then a sharp, painful zap. Missy snatches her hands back with a stifled swearword.

"I told you," says the Doctor. He twists a dial, and Missy watches him setting the timestream. "You can read my hands, can't you?"

She wants to rest her chin on his shoulder and press her chest against his back, watch him pilot this ancient - still stupid - machine. Tease him about his driving. She remembers the feeling of the levers and buttons under her own fingers as she took it, unwillingly, to Mars. She'd press herself against him, wrap her arms around his skinny little waist, rest her elbows on his bony hips while she set the stabilisers.

Missy clears her throat, watches as the Doctor types in a familiar set of coordinates.

"Really?" she asks.

"Really," he says, and flicks a switch.

"Binary stabilisers need a tuning," Missy says, tipping her head to one side. "Though of course, you know that."

"I do know that," says the Doctor, moving round the console, checking the scanner screen. "You however, are better at that than I am."

"You want me to be your errand girl," Missy says flatly.

The Doctor gives her a look around the time rotor. "You're a better mechanic than I am," he says. "And you're getting stifled in the Vault."

"I'm painting," Missy says, offended. "Stifled was forty years ago. I think I've reached bouncing off the walls by this point."

The Doctor grins, and he's beautiful. The TARDIS halts, the gravitational field altering slightly under their feet to compensate for something big. Boots heavy on the floor again, the Doctor heads for the doors.

"The Medusa Cascade," he says, and opens them, flooding the console room with light.

Missy finds herself smiling. The Doctor looks back at her, illuminated by the colours of the nebula - magenta, orange, green, yellow, space debris swirling through the gases, stars shining through the fog. His expression softens.

Missy gives in, walks across to him, peers out at the gases and stars and explosions and chemicals that make the universe a riot of light.

"You're crying again," the Doctor says quietly, and presses something into her hand, their fingers brushing.

Missy dabs at her eyes. "Just keeps happening," she murmurs, then laughs. She looks over at the Doctor. "And I'm still smiling. Thank you."

"You could paint this," says the Doctor, staring out at space.

"I suppose I could. You could, too."

The Doctor looks across at her, half his face lit up by the Cascade's colours, the other half in shadow. "I'm putting a lot of faith in you."

"I'll stay below decks when the Eggman and your human come barging in," Missy says, putting his hanky back in his hand. "Don't worry about that. Out of the way."

"I have faith in you," the Doctor says, and pauses, pressing his lips together. He purses his mouth, studies her.

"Doctor," Missy says.

Missy swears she can hear his hearts beating. 

"If this doesn't work," he says, in one breath, and he takes another, lets it out slowly. "I want you to know. Right now. I have had some wonderful times with you since you started trying to get better." He pauses. Missy wants to kiss him, holds off. "Hope is a horrible thing to have, isn't it."

"Yes."

The Doctor exhales, looks away from her, back at the stars. Missy faces out at the Cascade too. After a long moment's pause, where the universe revolves around them, the Doctor heads back into the TARDIS.

"Your room's where it always was," he calls over his shoulder. "Well it should be."

Missy turns, grins. Pauses, then gives in. "And where's yours?" she calls.

The Doctor's laugh echoes as he walks into the hallways of the TARDIS and vanishes from her sight. Missy sits carefully, hanging her legs out of the TARDIS. She looks back out at the stars, and smiles, and smiles.

 

*** * ***

 

A few hours later the Doctor calls her for dinner, and she wends her way to a little kitchen with brass fixings and sunshine-yellow tiles, a bowl of bright green apples on the table.

"Set the table, would you?" he asks, turning off the stove.

She does, the cutlery - metal cutlery, cork place-mats, actual glass drinking utensils, cloth napkins - clattering in her hands. Missy sits awkwardly on one side of the table, and the Doctor sets a plate of bacon, sausages and eggs in front of her, with two slices of hot buttered toast on the side.

He sits opposite her, pours them both a glass of blackcurrant juice.

"Is it sit-down meals for everyone?" Missy asks, and notes he's got no bacon, and the sausages are vegetarian. "Sunday roast?"

"Just on special occasions," he says, moving his egg onto his toast and slicing the yolk open. It oozes bright orange over the bread. "Eat, Missy."

"Why now?"

"You did so well on Mars. Seemed a shame to let you fester in the Vault when the TARDIS could use the company."

"You probably should have consulted with her on that one," Missy says. "She's not that particular, but when she's feeling picky, she's picky. Or peckish, that one time."

"She believes in you," says the Doctor firmly, and Missy raises an eyebrow. "You'll be - checking over the engines, that kind of thing," he says awkwardly. "I'll be with you most of the time, and I'll be checking your work as well."

"That goes without saying."

"And you can use the libraries, and the, the games room, and the swimming pool." The Doctor takes a moment to chew on a bit of toast. "The trampoline room, I know you liked that."

Missy takes a sip of juice, begins picking apart her bacon, enjoying the weight of the cutlery in her hands, the solidity of the metal.

"You can go back to the Vault, if you so wish," he says. "There's painting stuff too, somewhere. Last time I saw it was in Cupboard 64A. I prefer sketching, this time around."

"I'll have a wander," Missy says, studying him as he watches her. "If that's alright."

"The TARDIS has a say in these matters too," the Doctor says, and she nods. "I'm - happy with this."

Missy smiles at him, and a bit of bacon falls out of her mouth. The Doctor laughs as Missy blushes, then giggles too.

"I am as well," she says.

 

*** * ***

 

The Vault was stasis-locked, which meant she didn't actually have to sleep, though she did to fill in some hours. The tiredness hits her as she digs through the wardrobe's jewellery section to no avail.

"It's not in there," the Doctor says, when she emerges into the console room, yawning.

"Do you have it?" Missy asks, and he shakes his head. "I thought I might be assuming too much." She stifles another yawn. "Well. I'm off to bed."

The Doctor nods. Missy quirks an eyebrow at him.

"No, no," the Doctor says. "I'm not even - "

The doors are still open, colours of the Cascade spilling into the room, across the console and the Doctor's slim form. Missy takes a deep breath, lets the cold air fill her lungs. She stretches her hand out, fanning her fingers wide, brings her arm up to the open door. She clenches a fist.

"I might drag a mattress in here," she says.

"If you like," says the Doctor.

And so, Missy does. She hauls that in, and drags in some woollen blankets and an overstuffed pillow. She makes the bed quickly, avoiding the Doctor's gaze, even as he pretends to be reading. He hasn't turned a page in ten minutes. Missy shrugs out of her coat -

"There's pyjamas in the wardrobe," the Doctor says, sitting up in his chair. "I - I put some in your room too."

Missy quirks her lips up in a smile. "Seriously?"

"Despite the fact we do it with annoying regularity, I know you hate sleeping in your clothes as much as I do."

They're purple flannelette with a smiling cloud pattern. After brushing her hair out, Missy shuffles barefoot back into the console room, tucks herself in, looking out at space. The Doctor clumps down the stairs, types in something on the console. He brings around the scanner screen, squints at the atmospheric shell readings.

"I'm turning up the heat shield," the Doctor says. "Do you want anything before I go down to the workshop?"

"I know where the kitchens are," says Missy. "Night-night."

Missy curls up, tucks her chilly nose under the blanket and closes her eyes as the Doctor walks away. She peers out at the colours of the universe but drifts off quickly, closing her eyes against the vibrant hues of the Medusa Cascade.

She's cold, and she wakes up, grabs one of the other blankets and heaps it over herself.

She's cold, and there's footsteps, and she stirs, sees the Doctor typing away at the console. There's a vibration as the heat shield increases, and her eyes slide shut as the Doctor tucks another blanket over her.

It's a few hours of dozing, watching the stars, and dozing, and watching the colours move across the roof of the console room, and sleeping some more. The Doctor's footsteps vibrating through the floor as he wanders about the TARDIS.

Missy rolls over, and feels something on her forehead. She grumbles, bats at the bug. Somehow, mosquitoes get into the Vault sometimes. It's annoying.

Wait. She's in the TARDIS. Missy opens her eyes, blinks blearily up to see the Doctor, who looks out at the Cascade. He's stroking her hair, thumb along her hairline.

"Are you touching my hair?" Missy mumbles.

"No," says the Doctor, running his fingers along her head. "I have some news."

"You have some news." Missy rolls over, props herself up on her elbow, looks at him. "What's it?"

"Nardole's sent me a message. He thinks it's too quiet in the Vault. I'm going to put in an appearance, check everything's all locked up."

"You haven't told him?" Missy asks.

The Doctor withdraws his hand. "Of course not. I took an oath." He folds his hands in his lap. "So. Would you like to stay, or would you like to pop back into the Vault?"

Missy looks at him. She looks back out at the Cascade. She looks at the Doctor.

"I think that's an answer," says the Doctor. He clears his throat. "Missy."

She lies back down, drawing the blankets back up to her chin. "Doctor."

"I once said you could be so beautiful," the Doctor says, and Missy closes her eyes. "And it would be an honour to travel with you."

Missy opens her eyes again, blinks slowly up at him. "I remember it well."

He meets her gaze, face painted with the colours of the Cascade.

"Doctor?" Missy asks.

"Well, Missy, I hate being wrong." The Doctor brushes her hair back again. "Almost as much as you do."

"So what, you want me to make your statement true?"

"Yes. Make an honest man of me, would you?"

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading -- feedback is always appreciated!


End file.
